


What You Need

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: The Way of the Apartment Manager [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Character Study, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Genjutsu, Ninja, Side Story, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2018-02-23 15:12:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2552156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yukiko is a genjutsu specialist by necessity, not by inclination.  (Part of the "Apartment Manager" AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Need

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by the 4/19/10 [15_minute_ficlets](http://15_minute_ficlets.dreamwidth.org) word #29.
> 
> I mentioned midway through [The Way of the Apartment Manager](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1120050/chapters/2257065) that Yukiko is a genjutsu expert because she absolutely sucks at ninjutsu. "What You Need" a slightly more detailed explanation of her problem, which is a variation of Rock Lee's inability to use externalized chakra at all. (In other words, I am doing self-indulgent world-building about Kishimoto's rules of 'magic.' *grin*)

Ayakawa Yukiko specialized in genjutsu.

Not because she had an inherently delicate touch with chakra. She started off as clumsy as every other seven-year-old civilian kid, causing herself and everyone around her blinding headaches when she tried to touch their minds. She learned how to gauge and apply the right amount of power to the right moment and pattern through years of mind-numbing practice, at least three hours every day.

Not because she was weak. She could spin genjutsu for hours if she needed, though obviously the more complex her illusions grew, the more people she affected, and the more mental resistance she had to compensate for, the faster her strength ran out. But that was true for every ninja and every technique.

Not because she particularly liked mind games and cheating. There was, of course, a certain satisfaction in making people do what she wanted, or in getting one up on an opponent, but Yukiko had been a rough-and-tumble kid. She knew she could get the same satisfaction from physically knocking someone down.

Not because she was especially skilled at reading people. She learned to observe and analyze behavior through long and careful practice, guessing what images and words would have the best effect on people and correcting herself at every mistake. She worked at that as hard as she'd worked at chakra control -- week in, week out, for years.

Yukiko didn't specialize in genjutsu because she had a natural talent for it. She specialized in genjutsu because she couldn't do anything else.

Chakra was most obvious in its actions on a person's own body, carrying energy and life from the core to the extremities and back in an endless, elegant system of coils. Properly focused, chakra could make you stronger, faster, tougher. Everyone could do that much, because if you had no chakra, you'd be dead.

Extending chakra outside the body was a different story. Some people had strange kinks and gaps in their coils, which trapped their energy within themselves. Chakra limitations weren't quite disabilities -- or at least, they weren't referred to that way, perhaps because most civilians couldn't extend chakra, whether they might have been able to with training or not. But they were devastating for anyone who wanted to be a ninja.

Yukiko was lucky. She couldn't shape chakra to touch the physical elements -- reaching outside herself that way was like trying to push her arm through the eye of a needle. She couldn't do any ninjutsu without spending years carving the pattern for each single jutsu into her coils, and even then the techniques went sideways or stillborn half the time. But she could touch other people's chakra systems.

She could cast genjutsu.

And if that was the only thing she was able to do, then so help her, she was going to do it _right_.


End file.
